Poem for Saturday, September 27, 2014

Deluge

I.

A white car struggles forward with sweet
caution, then a red, like infant herring testing
the Atlantic currents. Where are you
going in this weather, I want to ask them all.
A deluge like this has been known to drown
lesser things; even the highest trees are
only so high

II.

when the wind is this vicious, ready to strip
us of our skin, do not go outside except
for bread or for love. Do you need anything
else to keep you alive, I want to ask
them

III.

the advantage that rain has over us is simple:
we cannot detect from where exactly it is
falling. All clouds converge into a new concept:
gray. A histrionic pause, then thunder is born,
then the drops speed up, then we are struck
with daggers

IV.

when we were children, we played in puddles
that collected where the earth sloped down,
where the contours of its surface gave in to our
weight. This is how we learned our world is
askew

V.

the cars slice through the post-storm thinness.
Somewhere in the night, a man is pulling up to a
house and turning off the headlights that kept him
alive. Somewhere in the night, a new river has
emerged; that which it takes was never ours
to decide.

Poem for Sunday, August 24, 2014

The Consequences of a Falling Sky

I.

The oceans reflect nothing; everything will shrink in the cold.

All the ships drift towards Lethe; everyone will grow thirsty.

II.

Molecules scatter like frightened sheep; our blood will turn thin.

The sun is not as bright as we thought; the wind will not relent.

III.

Language becomes paralanguage; we will kiss our words goodbye.

Poetry becomes our last concern; we will kiss our words goodbye.

IV.

The storms inundate the fields; all the earth will be a single field.

Our bodies are drenched; we will droop like naked stalks of wheat.

V.

When everything succumbs to darkness, my reaction will be to

extend my hand in your direction, to wait for the slightest brush

of your fingers.

Poem for Sunday, August 17, 2014

The Inventor

One night in August, I retreated inside from the thin summer air
and encountered an old man already three or four drinks deep.
We secured a table for a friendly game of eight-ball. The dim
bar light above betrayed the scratches on the green felt, and I
don't remember who broke or who hit what first, and I don't
remember much about physics and not enough about geometry,
and that's really all the game is.

A couple games later, and I don't remember who won. We cut
through the lobby and went outside for a reprieve from the
ruckus, the mangled music, the dead skin floating everywhere in
the air. There was enough light to see the streets and the people,
engrossed in dozens of conversations, trickling by. But the
silhouette of the mountains had long been veiled behind the still
darkness to which this town is accustomed.

The old man knelt on the sidewalk and began to roll a cigarette.
He mentioned that he lived down the canyon, that he was
designing some jet pack and had been a small-time inventor
for several years. He mentioned that he'd been an alcoholic for
even longer and had fought in a war. He lit the cigarette. His
weary lungs accepted the first trace of smoke before it plumed
upward towards the indifferent sky.

Which war, I asked.

He said it didn't matter. He said life itself is the greatest war
any of us has ever fought.

Poem for Monday, August 4, 2014

The Monsoons, Reluctant to Fall

By late July, it is brazenly summer here, and everyone takes some
heat with them, unknowingly hiding it beneath their skin. The rest
seeps into the sun-punished land, beige like unbleached wool,
cut by yucca and cacti madder than hell, and there is a dead raven
lying on the side of the road, desiccating while the world spins,
and its beak is beautiful and curves like a sickle.

And then, some respite: rain. They say monsoons here, the gravity
of the term lessened compared to when it emerges in the drawled
speech of the lush, vine-tangled south. The monsoons, then, are
reluctant to fall, but they must fall. You smell them, the freshness
of newly split atoms mingling with the pines. You watch them
pound against the orange Chinese boxcars until they glow.

Think of it this way: a memory is inevitable. It may be some other
rain-covered moment in your past; yes, you were playing in some
puddles that had collected on the slope of your driveway. Your
hands were much smaller. You cut one of them somehow, and the
blood sprang from its own well dug in the wound, and you had to
stop it quickly, very quickly, because it is so hard to get back
what is lost.

Poem for Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The Fire Gods Are Always Hungry

This is not the first thing you will learn there, but when you do
learn, the iron will make you sweat, the blood-heavy organs
will make homes beneath your fingernails like parasites in their
hosts. Someone beside you will be kneeling down; this is
for certain. They will pick up a knife, cradle it in their large hand.
They will thumb the blade into a piece of the stomach and toss it
in the stove where the flames are dancing.

You will begin to learn the hierarchy of the land. You will
deconstruct the grass on which you stand, first by the patch, next
by the blade, next by the cells inside each blade. You will never
forget how things once living grazed there under countless suns,
under countless moons, before they made it into the fire.

Poem for Thursday, July 24, 2014

These Things Are Gone

At the slope of the mountain is knee-high vetch,
violet like a storm, fields of it.

You stand there among it all,
coffee on your breath, feeling finite below
the aspen, clenching a rock in your hand.

Before you carve anything in that trunk, think
how these things are gone:

        letters we once saved in drawers,

        our footprints parallel in the snow,

        the flowers that sat on your desk

        over the years, how they all wilted

        in the same surrender.

God, there must have been thousands
of flowers.

Poem for Thursday, July 17, 2014

A Rooftop in Kentish Town

                   From such places,
                   we finally confirm
                   all our suspicions:

yes, the light dies more slowly
farther north, spilling cobalt
instead of black around
the moon;

yes, things get lost in the thickets,
a lap dog yelping from one
of the nameless gardens
below;

yes, when sitting alone on a bench,
implications vary according to
how close to the center
you are;

yes, for reasons lost in the ineffable,
this breeze-sliced night is not
meant to be reduced to a
photograph.